Of Having Met You And Loved You
by Gater101
Summary: Lestrade left his wife for Sherlock two and a half years ago. Now John Watson has arrived and Lestrade can feel the world he knows shifting around him.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Of Having Met You, And Loved You [1/4]  
Summary: Lestrade left his wife for Sherlock two and a half years ago. Now John Watson has arrived and Lestrade can feel the world he knows shifting around him.  
Characters: Everyone  
Pairing: Sherlock/Lestrade, eventual John/Sherlock in later parts  
Rating: PG-15

* * *

Lestrade has dinner with his wife (_ex_-wife) once or twice a month, during which he enquires after the well-being of their son and they pretend that she doesn't hate him for leaving her. (For another man, no less.) It's not easy and more often than not Lestrade finds that he misses her, misses their son with an ache so deep that it causes paroxysms in his chest and he finds that he can't breathe for a few seconds. And it galls him to think that he left them for the absolutely crazy, topsy-turvy world he lives in now. He's thought about going back, about begging her and then he thinks of Sherlock Holmes spread out on the sheets of his bed, gasping and writhing and arching and Lestrade knows that he can't give that up.

He's a selfish bastard. He knows this. He has been riddled with guilt about it since he was first crowded against a cell wall by Sherlock and all but molested in his own domain.

But he also knows there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. He'd tried to leave Sherlock, more than once, over the years but Sherlock is relentless and Lestrade's defenceless and it's just a huge fucking mess all over again.

"Jeremy saw your interview on the news the other night."

Lestrade winces and looks down at the minestrone soup he's been fiddling with for the past few minutes.

"I thought we weren't letting him watch the news."

Sylvia shrugs slightly and Lestrade catches a hint of defiance in the set of her lips. He feels his hackles rise and his jaw tightens of its own accord.

"He'd been watching the cartoons; they did a news break. I couldn't exactly help it. That guy was a Lord, or something."

Lestrade nods but sets his spoon into his dish and pushes it away. He hadn't been particularly hungry when he'd left the office and he certainly wasn't now.

"You're right, I guess." Sylvia nods and Lestrade looks up at her more carefully. She looks better than she has in the years since Lestrade left her, though she still looks tired. He feels a pang but he knows it's ridiculous – she'd looked tired even when they'd been together. "How are you?" He asks because he's no Sherlock Holmes; he may have known her for almost twenty years but he can't deduce what she's thinking from the necklace she chose to wore, or the colour of her nail polish.

She looks momentarily startled by the question and her lips quirk up at the sides slightly, her eyes downcast.

"I'm fine. I'm... better." Lestrade nods but she's not looking so he makes a sound in the back of his throat that he hopes she understands. "And you? How are... you?"

He knows what she's not asking, knows the name they don't say when they are together.

"Same as always," he replies just as vaguely and she nods, the air around them straining slightly. He clears his throat. "Listen-"

His phone beeps in his pocket. He pauses, his hand half way to his coat pocket but she simply smiles tightly and drops her spoon into her own bowl.

**They've found another body. Believe me yet? SH**

His phone rings in his hand. Ten minutes later he's on his way to another crime scene.

* * *

When he gets home, Sherlock's lying sprawled out across the sofa, his black leather duffel bag sitting beside the couch. Lestrade doesn't mind when Sherlock stays (he's been trying to convince him to move in for months now) but he wouldn't mind a bit of forewarning.

"What have you done this time?"

Sherlock tilts his head back over the arm of the couch as Lestrade shuffles around the room to the two-seater couch and drops onto it.

"Nothing."

Lestrade raises an eyebrow and kicks his feet up onto the low coffee table in between the couches.

"Right."

When Sherlock doesn't tell him, Lestrade has come to understand that it's best not to know.

"How was dinner?"

Lestrade freezes. He knows Sherlock knows but it's another one of those things that they just don't talk about. For some reason, Sherlock doesn't like to remember that he's a home wrecker.

"Fine."

He doesn't say anything to that. Silence stretches between them – it's not uncomfortable, not quite – and Lestrade closes his eyes, letting too many late nights creep up on him. He can hear the rhythmic tapping of small plastic keys as Sherlock types out message after message in his phone; there's a low buzz of traffic from outside the window; the central heating pipes chink beneath the floorboards; his breathing gets louder in his ears... He's on the edge of sleep when Sherlock deigns to speak again:

"Are you planning on sleeping all night? Only, I've been thinking of fucking you for the past two hours and nothing short of the act is going to help with the erection I've had since you walked in the door."

Lestrade doesn't open his eyes but he does smirk and it's all the invitation Sherlock needs.

* * *

He doesn't see Sherlock again for almost three weeks – which is probably for the best as he'd taken an absolute pummelling at work for the hickies on his neck that were too high for him to cover up. He and Sherlock don't consider their relationship a secret but it's not something that is known to the general populace of Scotland Yard and neither of them is effusive enough to give anything away with their body language.

When he does next see him, though, it's after his team have hit another dead end and Lestrade is exhausted again, and hungry and all he wants to do is fall into bed and sleep for a few days. He doesn't even care if he manages to take any of his clothes off. Except that Sherlock makes sure he does get naked and that when he does eventually get to sleep, it's the sleep of the dead.

When he wakes, it's too warm and his back feels like it's pressed up against a radiator. Sherlock's still there, then. He glances at the clock - 07.27 - and leans back against Sherlock.

"Good morning," Sherlock murmurs, his voice a deep rumble at Lestrade's ear. He shivers and Sherlock chuckles slightly.

"Morning." He closes his eyes and sighs, content. He could just stay like this all day.

"Donovan sent you a text; your superiors have organised a press conference today so you'd better shave..."

Lestrade wants to groan in complaint because the thought of a press conference makes him want to run away (they always do but especially with this case, where he has no clue what's going on but is being too stubborn to ask Sherlock for help) but Sherlock's fingers are stroking against the grain of the stubble on his jaw while his lips suck at that spot just below Lestrade's ear and he's gone, swept away again by the tidal wave that is Sherlock.

"I found a new flat," Sherlock informs him over a breakfast of coffee (Lestrade has toast but Sherlock's not eating today) and Lestrade nods, despite his disappointment. "You know I won't move in with you, Lestrade, so this cycle of disappointment every time I find a flat should stop."

Lestrade sighs into his cup.

"I know."

Sherlock eyes him, his gaze cold and clinical again and Lestrade hates it. He feels two inches tall under that gaze.

"Good." He drains his cup and drops it in the sink (a first) before he flutters out of the kitchen and grabs his bag. "Molly text; fresh bodies at Barts."

He's gone before Lestrade has managed to process what he said.

* * *

The press conference doesn't go well – and that's before Sherlock starts interfering. He hates the pressure that the cameras put him under, hates the stress of people asking him questions, interrogating him – that's _his_ job, not theirs. Sally can sense his tenseness and moves to wrap up the questions. His phone goes again.

**221B Baker Street. SH**

He deletes the message.

* * *

There's another body (bloody press conference) and he concedes that he's going to have get Sherlock in on it. He calls Sally over, hands control of the scene to her while he goes to fetch Sherlock.

"We can handle it, sir," Sally protests and Anderson glances up from his perusal of the body (too much pink) and nods in agreement. "You don't have to-"

"I disagree. We'll just give him five minutes and that'll be it." Sally gives him a sceptical look and he sighs again, knowing that she's right. That's never _all _once Sherlock gets involved. He knows there will be insults tossed about, that Sherlock will trample all over the boundaries of red-tape and he knows that there'll be no sex for him while Sherlock works. He also knows that Sherlock will get answers. "I'll be back in a bit," he says to Sally and grimaces along with her. To Anderson he says, "don't move anything."

Baker Street is much better (cleaner, safer, central) than any of the places Sherlock has lived in the past few years and Lestrade wonders if Sherlock has finally caved and taken money from Mycroft. (Lestrade has had the privilege of meeting Mycroft in a dim hospital corridor after Sherlock had almost OD-ed on heroine and he doesn't know how Sherlock manages to resist the elder Holmes – exposure, probably. But Mycroft Holmes is _creepy_, even by Lestrade's standards.)

There's no answer when he knocks and he feels bad when he pushes the front door open but he'd seen Sherlock at the window and he knows the other man is expecting him. He makes his way up the stair and ignores how out of breath he is from that slight exertion and fixes his eyes on Sherlock, silhouetted against the high window. When Lestrade comes to a stop, Sherlock twists from his hips and looks at something to Lestrade's right. There's an older woman fluttering about the room and Lestrade ignores her as he answers Sherlock's query.

Then he notices. Sherlock... Sherlock is showing off. Lestrade flicks his eyes around the room and discovers a man sitting in an armchair, his hands folded over the head of a hospital-issue walking stick looking... bored. Lestrade dismisses him and turns back to Sherlock.

"Will you come?"

Sherlock looks at him, and there's a mischievious glint to his eye that Lestrade ignores (has to, else they'll never make it back to the crime scene and he's under enough pressure already).

"Not in a police car."

That's all Lestrade needs to hear.

* * *

Lestrade... was not expecting the man from the flat to show up at the crime scene with Sherlock. And he didn't know what to do with Sherlock's vehement _"He's with me_" either because Sherlock doesn't _have people_.

He watches Sherlock – like he always does – as the man moves about the body and when Sherlock invites _Dr Watson_ to tell him what he thinks, Lestrade isn't sure whether to be amused or surprised, so he settles for both and turns to make sure Anderson keeps everyone from the room.

When he comes back, Lestrade feels like he's in the Twilight Zone. Sherlock is still showing off (it's almost like watching a peacock) and when Watson repeats his expressions of awe, Sherlock isn't annoyed like Lestrade thought he would be. In fact-

"No, it's... it's fine."

He's almost shy. Coy.

Lestrade doesn't know what to think. Inside, a bubble of something far too much like jealousy forms in his gut and he tries to pop it before it blossoms but he's not entirely sure that it's possible. Because Sherlock has never, _never _looked at Lestrade the way he just looked at Watson. Sure, he's seen Sherlock iput on/i coy in an effort to get Lestrade back to bed but that- what he's just witnessed was... He's not sure what that was.

The only word he can think of is 'pure'.

* * *

He retaliates, perhaps harshly, with a drug's bust. It's unfair and uncalled for and the look Sherlock sends him is one of betrayal but then Sherlock and John are sharing air and Lestrade's sure he's not the only one in the room who feels like he's intruding.

And then Sherlock, the iidiot/i, goes with the killer-cabbie - and almost gets shot into the bargain. In the chaos that is yet another crime scene, Lestrade hunts through the crowds for the familiar head of hair. He sees Sally and she nods in the direction of the ambulance and Lestrade feels his stomach drop. He knows Sherlock doesn't _do _ambulances and...

But he's panicking over nothing because Sherlock is there, covered in an orange shock blanket that has Lestrade smiling slightly and a few of his guys taking pictures. He wants to reach out and _touch_, so he buries his hands in his pockets and shares a few words with Sherlock. He wants to rant and shout and demand to know just what Sherlock thought he was bloody well doing but there's time for that later, after the clean up and questions.

Except there's not. Because Sherlock has that look in his eye he gets when something is iinteresting/i and he's walking away from the ambulance – from Lestrade – with nought but a casual dismissal about talking about the rent and Lestrade is left to gape at the retreating figure.

He watches, sees Watson chuckle and Sherlock smile (real, genuine – that word again -, 'pure') and Mycroft's there. He turns away when Sally approaches but keeps an eye on the group on the periphery of the scene. Sherlock – still preening – walks away with Watson without looking over his shoulder.

* * *

The next day, Lestrade doesn't get out of bed until well after eleven and even then that's only because he can hear the tell tale sounds of someone moving about out in his living room. He rolls out of bed, runs his hand through his hair and picks up the glass of water that's been sitting on his nightstand for three days and downs the contents.

It's more than revolting.

In the living room, Sherlock is dismantling the television from its mount on the wall. Lestrade watches for a few moments, appreciating the way the white shirt pulls tight across Sherlock's shoulders as he moves, the powerful muscles of his back shifting under fabric and skin. Lestrade doesn't understand what it is about the sight that has his morning erection reasserting itself in his shorts.

"What are you doing?" He asks when it becomes clear Sherlock isn't going to say anything.

"I'm trying to ascertain what size of screw holds this to the wall."

Lestrade nods for a few moments before he stops and starts shaking it instead.

"Why?" Sherlock doesn't answer. "Sherlock?"

"Hm? Oh. I need to find out what screws to buy so we can put the television on the wall. There's no space big enough for it on the furniture we have and a new television stand won't fit."

Lestrade frowns.

"It's already on the wall, Sherlock."

"What?" Sherlock turns to him then, his brows pulled into a quizzical frown and Lestrade knows he's fighting a losing battle as Sherlock rummages in his coat that is lying discarded over the arm of the couch. Sherlock has no interest in what Lestrade is saying to him. "No." Sherlock quirks a bemused smile at Lestrade then turns back to the (now bare) wall mount after he pulls a screwdriver from a pocket of the coat. Lestrade's really not going to ask. "John has a flat screen TV and I bought a wall mount for it this morning but there were no screws in it."

"John?"

"Yes," Sherlock says and Lestrade would need to be deaf not to pick up on the irritation in his voice. "John."

"And who is John?"

"Surely your memory isn't that bad, Lestrade," he retorts, his tone sardonic and Lestrade rolls his eyes. "John Watson, my new flatmate, you met him yesterday."

Lestrade splutters.

"What?"

Sherlock's finished unscrewing the screw from the wall and he holds it up for a moment before pocketing it and spinning around to face Lestrade.

"I couldn't afford Baker Street on my own, so I had to get a flat mate. John moved in last night. Or rather, this morning-" he draws his brows together again and looks over Lestrade's shoulder "-depends on how you look at it. Anyway. I have all I need," he continues and taps his trouser pocket.

"You needed a flatmate and you didn't ask me? I've been trying to get you to move in here for months, Sherlock!"

Sherlock's face goes completely blank and Lestrade hates that look. It's always a precursor to Sherlock walking out and not speaking to him for weeks. (The last time it happened, Lestrade had called Mycroft when Sherlock had gone on a four day binge just over a year ago and it'd taken Lestrade seven weeks to convince Sherlock to talk to him, let alone stay over.)

"And I've been telling you for months, _Greg_, that I won't."

"Why not?"

Sherlock's stare turns baleful and Lestrade bristles at the sight of it.

"You know why."

Lestrade laughs at that and shakes his head.

"You know, Sherlock, I really don't. Why don't you just tell me something for once?"

"This-"

"And if you say 'this is just sex'-"

"I wasn't going to say that but now I'm intrigued as to how you were going to finish that sentence. If I had said that, Greg, what? You'll do what?"

Lestrade glares.

"Just tell me, Sherlock."

"It's not 'just sex'. But it's certainly not love either and by moving in-"

"Sherlock."

For once, Sherlock uses tact and shuts up. He stares and Lestrade stares back.

"Go."

Sherlock huffs and Lestrade turns away.

"I don't understand why verbalising something that we both know to be the truth changes anything." Lestrade shakes his head. Of course Sherlock doesn't understand. "Just because I don't love you doesn't mean I don't want you."

"Sherlock-" He stalls when he feels Sherlock's warmth at his back. The man can move like a panther when he wants to. "What are you doing?"

"I hate performatives, Lestrade." His breath washes over Lestrade's neck and he shudders as the heat from it heads straight to his groin and he decides he hates performatives, too.

They don't make it to the bedroom – in fact, they don't make it farther than the three steps it takes for Sherlock to have Lestrade pushed up against the wall - and when Sherlock leaves over an hour later, Lestrade goes to turn the TV on and realises it's sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall and the four screws that attach the mount to the wall are gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Of Having Met You, And Loved You [2/4]  
Summary: Lestrade left his wife for Sherlock two and a half years ago. Now John Watson has arrived and Lestrade can feel the world he knows shifting around him.  
Characters: Everyone  
Pairing: Sherlock/Lestrade, eventual John/Sherlock in later parts  
Rating: PG-15

* * *

When Lestrade had first met Sherlock, the younger man had been high as a kite and about ten seconds from bouncing off the walls. As it was, he'd been bouncing around the boxing ring of a highly illegal, highly gang-funded underground boxing club, his pupils blown wide and almost eclipsing the ring of grey surrounding them. His hair had been much shorter, cropped in at the sides and back, the top only an inch or two long; his arms were almost emaciated if not for the strong tendons of muscle that flexed under the skin whenever he moved his (shirtless) torso; his accent had been rough cockney, his voice higher and less polished. It hadn't suited him.

Lestrade arrested him.

When it had come time for the captured men to hand over their identities, Lestrade had found his erstwhile drug addict vibrating in the back of the line.

"Name?"

The man had turned a glower on him so high-brow Lestrade knew that if the man-boy spoke, it wouldn't be with a cockney accent.

"Michael Young Croft."

"Identification?" Lestrade had continued as he jotted 'M. Y. Croft' down on the top of the sheet. When he'd looked up, the man was holding his arms wide in a 'look-at-me' gesture that had had Lestrade running his eyes over the (still naked) torso and ill-fitting suit trousers. "You don't have any I take it?" The other man had simply raised an impervious eyebrow. "Date of birth?" He remained quiet and Lestrade let out a breath of frustration and glowered. "Come on."

The lips (that Lestrade had fixed his eyes on and not realised) twisted up in a smirk and the man (William) took a loose, lazy step forward and was suddenly in Lestrade's space.

"Old enough, Inspector." The voice had been a purr, deep and low and Lestrade knew that this was the voice that went with the face and he knew exactly what the voice that went with the face was trying to do.

"Date of birth, Mr Croft."

He hadn't understood why the other man had had to suppress a snort at that, not until almost a year later when he'd learned of Mycroft's existence.

"Twenty second of the first." Lestrade waited a beat then refocused on the man across from him, purposely avoiding the lips and the eyes. "I'll let you decide the year."

And then he was gone, following the line of arrestees into a cell and Lestrade had stared at his incomplete form and sighed. He's always known which battles to fight.

When he'd gone back the next morning (way before the time any of the prisoners would be released) he'd been informed that a call had come in from on high and William Croft had been let go.

The memory Lestrade was haunted with for three weeks was the sight of those grey eyes, obliterated by blackness, the muscles vibrating out of the skin that housed them.

The sight Lestrade is greeted with now is a similar one, though he knows it's not drug induced – merely the thrill of the chase, the scent of danger thrumming through Sherlock's body.

"Lestrade," Sherlock whines as he whirls away from the body, his coat flouncing out around him. "I told you, only the interesting cases. Try to be more intelligent next time." He's out of the door before Lestrade can respond (he's used to that, so when Watson meets his eyes with an apologetic look, Lestrade simply shrugs and walks back into the centre of the room). From behind him, he hears Sherlock's voice, "Come on, John."

And then Watson is gone, too.

* * *

It's past one o'clock in the morning when Lestrade feels a body slip into bed behind him, the press of naked flesh at his back. He sighs and leans against the added warmth and Sherlock's lips find the edge of hair at his neck, then his pulse point. An arms drapes over his chest and pulls him back and Lestrade closes his eyes and lets the sandman pull him back to dreaming.

He wakes and Sherlock's gone but the bed beside him isn't cold yet. He stretches out, looks at the clock and curses – it's not the first time Sherlock's knocked the electricity out and the digital clock blinks it's double double-zeros at him.

* * *

He goes to Baker Street after work. It's more quiet than he would have expected, given the stories Lestrade has read on Watson's blog and heard circulating around the offices (eyeballs in the microwave; fingers in the oven, feet in the bath – Lestrade's inclined to disbelief but he also knows what Sherlock's like).

"Ah, Detective," Watson says in surprise and steps back from the door (Lestrade hadn't been sure whether to knock at ground level, or just come in. He'd settled for knocking, got no answer then climbed the stairs and knocked again). Lestrade smiles in thanks and steps over the doorway and it feels like he's walked into another world. There are books everywhere, bits of paper tacked to the walls, pictures of skulls on the walls, a skeleton (he hopes it plastic) is peeking out from behind the curtains of one window while an empty bird cage is obscured in the other. There's antlers (or something) on the wall and Sherlock's (the one's Lestrade had bought him when he'd complained about the sound from the in-ear ones) very, very expensive head-phones are hooked over the dome and held in place by the horns. Lestrade sighs and when he looks back to Watson, the other man is shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Is this about a case?"

Lestrade frowns momentarily and tries to shrug off the random awkwardness of being in 221B Baker Street without the ruse of a case. Clearly, Sherlock hasn't mentioned the more... leisurely side to his and Lestrade's relationship. Lestrade's not surprised, though there's a part of him that would quite like to see how the doctor feels about living with a homosexual (and a very flamboyant one at that).

"Ah, no. Social call, actually."

"Oh." Watson looks surprised but manages to hide it quickly. "Well, have a seat. Sherlock's just popped down to ASDA to pick up a few things. There'll be no tea until he comes back, unless you take it black."

Lestrade raises an eyebrow at that and he knows he hasn't managed to keep the utter astonishment from his features.

"You managed to get Sherlock to go shopping?"

Watson snorts lightly and lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his ear for a moment and Lestrade's sure he can see a faint flush across the top of his cheeks. It's gone in an instant but the doctor still looks abashed.

"I hid his nicotine patches."

Lestrade's eyebrow climbs higher, mirroring his astonishment.

"And he didn't find them?"

Watson laughs again, a quiet chuckle, and Lestrade can't help but feel his lips quirk at the sound. It's... infectious.

"No, he did. But I'd dissolved the adhesive on the back and they wouldn't stick."

Lestrade guffaws and stares at the doctor for a few long moments in utter amazement.

"That... was very inventive." Watson shrugs and shifts to his other foot. "I'll take a coffee, if you have any."

"Sure, yeah."

When he leaves the room, Lestrade sinks into the grey leather seat, letting his shoulders relax. It'd been a tedious day, filled with paper work and Donovan and he just wanted to have a semi-normal (or as normal as it gets with Sherlock Holmes) night in with his... with Sherlock (pathetic how even now he can't bring himself to say lover or boyfriend). Then his eyes fix on the television on the wall and he screws his eyes up and glares at it.

"Did Sherlock hang your TV?" He calls through to the kitchen and he can hear Watson move back towards the open doorway.

"Yeah, why?"

Lestrade just shakes his head and laughs.

"He stole my screws for it."

There's a beat of silence and then Watson is laughing again, but it's an embarrassed sound and when Lestrade turns, his features are apologetic and abashed.

"I did wonder... they weren't in a packet or anything. I'll kill him. We'll take it down, you can have your screws-"

"It's fine, I had more anyway. Just... That's Sherlock for you."

Watson nods and turns back to the kitchen as the kettle boils. Downstairs, the front door bangs open and Lestrade can't help but snort at the heavy, petulant footsteps that thump their way up the stair.

"Ah, here he is," Watson says brightly from the kitchen (a little too brightly, Lestrade thinks). "Did you know, Inspector, that Sherlock has a fan site?"

Sherlock stops in the doorway and lets out a loud huff of air and drops an ASDA bag onto the couch. He strips his coat quickly and turns to hook it on the back of the door. He's wearing the white shirt again and Lestrade is momentarily fixated on the shift of muscles beneath the (very expensive) material.

"Yes," Sherlock drawls in an imperial tone that Lestrade knows well, "it's called your website."

Lestrade snorts at that and Sherlock throws him a small surprised, amused look that elicits an even softer smile from Lestrade.

"No, really. It's quite scary actually," Watson continues as he carries two cups into the living room. One he passes to Lestrade, the other he barely manages to keep out of Sherlock's clutches. "If you want tea, you know where the kettle is."

"You were already making some," Sherlock protests and Lestrade watches as Watson smirks and lowers himself into the other chair.

"And now I'm finished making some. You know how to work a kettle, Sherlock, I've seen you do it before."

Sherlock huffs and drops onto the couch. Lestrade is... amused by the exchange. It's strange to watch Sherlock with someone else who's not afraid to answer back to him – someone who Sherlock doesn't instantly dismiss. Sherlock tilts his head in Lestrade's direction, his face tilted to the side in what Lestrade knows to be the "Please?" face. He's managed to become somewhat immune to it over the years, so he simply holds up his own cup of steaming brew and smirks.

"Don't look at me."

"I will die of dehydration, then."

"Sure. Just be quiet about it."

Lestrade thinks he might like this John Watson.

* * *

John leaves around seven to meet some friends from the army (Sherlock had tensed when Lestrade had pinned him with a sharp gaze when the revelation had been made but Lestrade had kept his silence) for a quiet drink and Lestrade finds himself being squashed into the (far too small for Sherlock's purposes) chair he'd been sitting in for the past hour and a half. He doesn't mind, not when Sherlock just wants to wind his legs around Lestrade's waist and sit there as they watch the news.

They kiss (of course they do; Lestrade can't be this near to Sherlock and not touch his lips to the skin) and hands meander but it's only gentle, soft caresses – not designed to arouse. Lestrade quite likes it, even if his leg is going into cramp.

They order take away (an order that Sherlock has to amend because no, there won't be ribs and boiled rice this time but shredded beef and noodles, thank you) and end up on the couch, stretched out but wrapped around one another. Lestrade used to hate it, the way Sherlock would wrap around his back but it only made sense; naturally taller, Sherlock just fit there. There's lips on his neck, news on the telly and food in his belly; Lestrade shuffles back and down, lacing his fingers with Sherlock's where they rest over his hip.

Sherlock's propped up on an elbow watching the television over Lestrade's shoulder when Watson returns. Lestrade tenses, waiting for Sherlock to pull away and he's surprised when all Sherlock does is turn his head towards the door when it swings open.

"Oh." The tone is mild, almost bland and Lestrade turns to see the bemused expression on Watson's face. He feels his own tinge slightly – no one has ever seen them together, and especially not like this. "Sorry, I'll just-"

The door clicks shut and stays that way for a moment before it opens again and Watson is back in the room, crossing to the table and grabbing the laptop. He spares a quick, amused glance at Lestrade that he responds to with a well-mannered glower and then John is gone again.

It takes a long moment (and Lestrade hadn't realised it had happened, at all) but Sherlock lets out a breath and his body relaxes again, his breath turning into a low laugh.

"His sister is gay and he's more bisexual than he admits. It's fine."

Lestrade isn't sure who he is trying to convince.

* * *

Lestrade wakes with a crick in his neck and he's cold. He's too old to be sleeping on couches. He sits up, something pops and when he tries to stretch his muscles protest and cramp, so he flops back onto the couch and stairs up at the ceiling. It's still dark out and when he glances at the watch on his wrist, he sees it's just gone four o'clock.

Sherlock is at the table tapping away on his laptop (though when Lestrade looks closer, he sees it's not Sherlock's laptop but the one Watson had taken with him when he'd left the room). He smiles slightly and watches Sherlock's face twitch and shift in the eerily bright glow. Lestrade has never thought of another man as beautiful – not until he'd seen Sherlock, wild and not-all-there – and he's sure he'll never apply the adjective to any other man. Before Sherlock, he'd never even considered being with another man – the thought hadn't disgusted him, as such, it was just something he had never thought about. But then Sherlock had broken into his office and sat in Lestrade's chair with his feet on the table, all casual indifference to the fact that he'd just broken into a police station and Lestrade had wanted him. Truth be told, he'd wanted him since he'd first seen the man; sweat, blood and all.

"Sherlock?"

"Hm?"

Lestrade pauses. It had only been a few weeks ago that they'd not really discussed what they were – they never had and, if Lestrade didn't say anything now, they likely never would. And despite Sherlock's hatred of performatives, it had been nearly three years.

"What are we doing?" There's a long pause where Lestrade can see Sherlock still, his hands poised over the keys he'd been fluttering about and he regrets the words instantly. He wants to pull them back but, just as much, he wants to push them forward, wants to force them into Sherlock, force different words out of the man. "I mean, you say it's not love and it's not just sex. So what is it then?"

There's an even longer pause, and Lestrade watches Sherlock's fingers curls slightly before he straightens them out again. Lestrade purses his lips and looks to the window.

When he does respond, Sherlock's voice is bland, though not quite cold.

"Easy?" Lestrade's not sure what to make of that and he's about to say so when Sherlock continues. "Convenient?" There's a beat. "I don't know, Greg." There's another beat and Sherlock finally glances back around to Lestrade, a small (almost sad) smile on his lips. "You know I hate performatives."

* * *

He gets a text several hours later (it's his day off, Sherlock knows this but a murder's a murder and he's still Sherlock's link to the Yard).

**Found a body. Come at once. SH**

He waits a moments, pondering the possibility of Sherlock just finding a body, sighs, texts back for details and gets just the address instead.

He sends Dimmock.

* * *

He phones Sylvia. She's surprised but not negatively so. She invites him over and they chat for a while and he even manages to spend a few hours with Jeremy (they play football in the park then go for Pizza Hut before he drops his son back off at home with his mother).

He sleeps late the next day, doesn't watch the news and reads a book about Penguins.

He doesn't see Sherlock, he doesn't hear from him (though it's not surprising, there is a case on) but he keeps tabs with Dimmock.

It's a quiet two days.

* * *

Dimmock calls to let him know that there's been an altercation. Sherlock, the doctor and the woman are fine but there's a dead body and would he please come down and help with Sherlock?

Lestrade goes because whenever he hears the word 'altercation' in relation to Sherlock, his heart skips a beat and his brain releases adrenalin into his blood stream and suddenly it's his body that's on vibrate.

When he gets there, the scene is being cleared up and Dimmock apologises because Sherlock has already left with Watson and the woman has been escorted home. Lestrade sighs (it may have been a growl) and gets back in his car and drives to Baker Street.

He doesn't knock this time and the door's not locked (he wonders if Mrs Hudson knows her front door is being used merely as a passage way for Sherlock and his guests) so he makes his way up the stairs (a little quickly, his brain is still producing adrenaline because he's not seen Sherlock yet and though Dimmock had said they were fine...)

He's not sure what to make of the scene he walks in on.

Sherlock is perched on the arm of the couch, his head tilted up so he is facing the ceiling and Watson's fingers are dancing across his throat. They're laughing, quietly, and Sherlock's features are pulled into a smile reminiscent of the one that night he'd almost been shot by the anonymous killer-cabbie killer. That word floats around his head again and he mentally bats it away as he steps further into the room.

Sherlock tilts his head towards Lestrade then and Watson grumbles something and, fingers to Sherlock's chin, tilts his head back.

"Sorry," Sherlock murmurs quietly and licks his lips and Lestrade can see his Adam's apple bob up and down.

Lestrade's mimics the gesture, his eyes flittering between Sherlock's neck and Watson's hands. Then he sees what it is the doctor is prodding.

"You need to stop letting people strangle you, Sherlock," John condemns a scant moment before Lestrade let out a breathy 'Jesus Christ'.

Sherlock spares Lestrade a look for the profanity and John glances over, smiling tightly.

"It's not like I let him."

"Learn self-defence."

Sherlock scoffs and tilts his head back down once Watson has retreated a few steps.

"I am perfectly capable-"

"Obviously not." John yawns, throws his hand over his mouth to smother it then blinks several times in quick succession. "I'm knackered." He looks at Sherlock again, shakes his head and turns towards Lestrade (or rather, towards the door but Lestrade's still stuck in front of it, his sight not able to leave the bruises on Sherlock's neck because Jesus Christ, someone had tried to strangle him). "I'm going to bed." Watson moves to leave the room and Lestrade sidesteps, moving to let Watson by. "He's all yours."

Lestrade catches the tail end of Sherlock watching Watson leave the room.

He wonders about the truth of that statement.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Of Having Met You, And Loved You [3/4]  
Summary: Lestrade left his wife for Sherlock two and a half years ago. Now John Watson has arrived and Lestrade can feel the world he knows shifting around him.  
Characters: Everyone  
Pairing: Sherlock/Lestrade, eventual John/Sherlock  
Rating: PG-15 (some discussion and description of sex)

* * *

The first time he has sex with Sherlock, it's against his car door and it's six months after Lestrade first met him. Sherlock's still high (and he says 'still' because he doesn't doubt that Sherlock has been high since that first meeting six months before) and Lestrade should really know better. He doesn't know how it started – okay, he does – and afterwards, he isn't glad that he's done it.

But during it - _oh_.

He'd been driving Sherlock back to the flat he was renting down near the docks (because Sherlock had somehow managed to get Lestrade's number and had been taunting him for months and Lestrade has somehow become his chauffeur in that time) and Sherlock reeks of stale sweat, cigarette smoke and something he knows but plays dumb to. And he's driving down the streets of London city centre, listening to Sherlock ramble and chatter (he says listening but he knows he'd tuned out, he must have done because there's no way he would have missed the sudden silence if he had been listening) when suddenly Sherlock's head is in his lap and his mouth is hot and warm and hot and Lestrade's car may or may not have mounted the kerb a little but Jesus fuck.

"Sherlock!"

But it's a token protest and they both know it; this has been building for months – six months, to be exact – and Lestrade has thought at times that he might burst with the pressure that had been building inside him all those months. Lestrade's hand drops to Sherlock's head as he mouths Lestrade's (already so fucking hard) cock through his suit trousers and boxers, the fingers of one hand lingering dangerously docile in the middle of Lestrade's thigh and Lestrade is desperately trying to find a place to pull to car over (somewhere hidden, preferably because...)...

He gets his first blow-job from a man at a bus stop at four thirty in the morning. He gets fucked for the first time by a man at quarter to five in the morning against the side of his car in the not-so-private side-alley next to Sherlock's flat. After Sherlock had left (with nothing more than a quick, open mouthed press of lips to the back of Lestrade's neck) Lestrade had fixed himself back into his trousers and shifted gingerly back into the car. It took him half an hour to collect himself enough to start the engine and when he put his hands on the steering wheel, his eyes lingered over the finger he didn't wear his wedding ring on and he'd felt the aching clench of guilt tear through him.

He gets to Baker Street (he spends a lot of time there these days) and this time Mrs Hudson opens the front door and ushers him up the stair well. She's a lovely woman, if a little eccentric, and Lestrade feels bad that every time he 'pops round', he is in too much of a rush to see Sherlock to actually spend any time talking with her. He thinks she might lonely but when he'd brought up the topic with John, the other man had assured him that Mrs Hudson had a better social life that most people John knew, combined.

So he doesn't feel bad as he edges up the stairs to 221B but he does let out a startled laugh at the sight of the door of the first floor flat. For one, there are rather conspicuous holes in it (Lestrade feigns ignorance and hopes that the door is replaced or repaired by the time he conducts another drugs bust). For another, there's four lines of text scrawled on it in thick black marker pen, the top two of which are scored through with a few ill-placed lines.

**The Mad-House **

The first one read and Lestrade bites back a laugh, which escapes anyway when he reads the second:

**Don't be so pedestrian.**

He recognises Sherlock's tone, if not his handwriting (which he does, of course, but he'd recognise the former well before the latter) but his laughter dims to mild confusion when he reads the two following lines:

**somewhere i have never travelled**

**Much better.**

By now, he's learned not to wonder too much so he just knocks once and pushes the door to 221B open. He stalls (first at the quiet then at the walls). There are A4 sheets of paper tacked... everywhere. No piece of the wall is visible and, when he turns, he can see that some sheets have even been taped to the windows, which cast strange shadows in the otherwise brightly lit room. John sits in the middle of it, his newspaper spread over his knees, cup in one hand and simply smiles mildly at Lestrade as he surveys the room.

"What..?" He starts then decides that it might be best not to know. "A case?"

John snorts.

"I wish." He raises an eyebrow at Lestrade, and he can't help but smirk back at the unfortunate man who has to share with Sherlock. Since Sherlock had moved into 221B (and Lestrade spent increasing amounts of time there) he'd begun to notice that Sherlock was... not the best flatmate. Sure, logically, he's always known that but there's something about seeing it in practice that really drives the theory home. "Boredom."

"What is it?" He asks as he takes a step towards the wall, seeing that the paper is covered in Sherlock almost unintelligible scrawl, which is covering printed words. He scans one sheets but the words are – well, they're not words and look more like a code to him than an actual language so he shakes his head and takes a seat on the chair opposite John.

"Poetry." Lestrade raises his eyebrow again, the snort catching in the back of his throat. "Yeah," John continues and gestures to the door to the sitting room with a grimace. "My own fault, I guess."

The silence that follows is only interrupted when John folds his paper in half and sets it on the coffee table in front of the couch. Lestrade doesn't really know what to say despite being around John for almost six months now (he can count on the one hand the amount of times Sherlock has shown up at Lestrade's flat unannounced – now, there is a text informing him he is to be at Baker Street at some point in the night. Lestrade thinks he should be annoyed by this. He's not surprised when he learns he's not).

"Where is he?" He asks eventually and John looks up from his perusal of the threads on the arms of the chair, his eyebrow raised.

"As far as I can tell, he's in his room. Haven't seen him since yesterday." Lestrade is about to ask how John is sure Sherlock isn't dead when John continues. "I've heard him. Apparently he can still see me, which is why the walls are still covered in _ridiculous poetry_!" He shouts the last part and, because Lestrade has his ears strained for any sound of Sherlock, he can hear the huff of annoyance from the room through the kitchen (he never did get the layout of this flat – it was a bit hit and miss).

There's rustling from said room and the door swings open to reveal a bedraggled (and be-dressing-gowned) Sherlock. Lestrade has always liked that dressing gown, especially when it was all Sherlock wore.

"It is not ridiculous, John. It's just beyond your comprehension."

"It's beyond anyone's comprehension because they aren't even words. They're just letters randomly splashed across a page."

Sherlock strides into the room (his dressing gown flowing about behind him) and flops onto the couch. The middle cushion jumps up and lands on Sherlock's stomach before it is grumpily dispatched onto the floor.

"While technically that is all _any book really_ is, you are wrong in this instance and you know it. You wrote a line of his poetry on our front door." Lestrade turns to John but John is too busy glaring at Sherlock to notice Lestrade's bemused expression. "Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence."

Lestrade stills (as does his heart, momentarily) before every centilitre of his blood rushes to his groin. He's never heard Sherlock recite poetry before (didn't know the man knew any, to be honest) and he's not exactly pleased to discover this in front of John Watson because now he's hard and it's probably very obvious and- but when he looks at John, the other man is too busy staring at Sherlock (and Lestrade can't figure out if the heated gaze is still a glare or something else entirely) to notice anything else in the room. Eventually, he throws his hands up in the air and pushes himself out of his seat.

"See if you can get him to stop being a whiny bitch before I get back, would you, Lestrade?" John says as he moves to the door and dons his jacket. Sherlock twists his neck to glare at John's back. "If I come back..." John mutters as he makes his exit and Lestrade is left to listen to the sound of Sherlock scoffing as he stares at the empty door.

"He'd be well within his rights to leave, you know," Lestrade ventures some long seconds later and Sherlock turns his glare onto him and sneers.

"Don't be ridiculous, Lestrade. Your luck isn't that good."

It's the first time in a long time that Lestrade has wanted to hit Sherlock.

* * *

When he told his wife about Sherlock (after the second they'd shagged – up against the wall in Lestrade's office at the Yard), she'd laughed it off for a few seconds before realising that he was deadly serious. It took a second, but the slap landed square on his jaw but he didn't try to stop it.

He bunked with one off his mates until he'd found a flat of his own.

He didn't see Sherlock for two months.

* * *

He's almost wary when Sherlock asks if he wants to go out for dinner.

"Like a date?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes but doesn't tilt his head in Lestrade's direction (they're at his flat, for once, and already Lestrade can see Sherlock shifting about in his chair as though he wants to move – to leave).

"I think after three years, Lestrade, we'd be beyond that. But yes, a date."

When they get to the Moroccan place Lestrade has been wanting to try for a few months, it becomes clear that yes, Sherlock really does know just about every restaurant owner within a ten mile radius of Baker Street. The pair are ushered to a quiet seat in the corner and a candle is lit between them and Lestrade can't quite figure out why Sherlock stares at it for a moment with a soft, almost wistful, smile gripping the edges of his lips. Instead, he concentrates on the way the flickering light from the flame licks across Sherlock's face giving the pale skin an unearthly glow.

"So," Lestrade says after they order some drinks (Lestrade had peered at the beer list before opting for a cola and Sherlock settles for his customary glass of white wine) and Sherlock looks over at him, his brow quirked quizzically. Lestrade makes a gesture between them and returns the quizzical eyebrow. "What's this in aid of then?" He asks and Sherlock frowns for a moment before it clears.

"Bored."

"John out with Sarah, then?" The words slip out before his internal filter engages and he knows how it sounds but he's pretty sure he doesn't mean for it to come the way it does. Lestrade sees Sherlock plenty but he's not stupid enough to believe that he and John don't spend every other moment in each other's presence and the only time Sherlock is bored enough that he'll take Lestrade out but not bored enough to blow up the flat is when John is otherwise occupied. "I didn't-"

"Yes, he is."

The words are simple, just laid out there on the table and Lestrade can pick and choose what to do with them. He ignores them and sits back when the waiter – conveniently – arrives with their drinks and takes their order and when he's gone again, Lestrade is surprised when Sherlock's fingertips brush against his knuckles in something terribly akin to an affectionate caress (and if there's a word Lestrade hates it's got to be caress because doesn't it just sound like something out of an erotic novel?).

"I've…" Lestrade watches Sherlock watch their fingers and it's strange but he feels detached from it, the feeling in his stomach not entirely a good one. It scares him that it stems from Sherlock's affectionate gesture. "Missed this," Sherlock finishes and withdraws his hand, settling his long fingers around the stem of his wine glass. "There's something to be said for having dinner with someone whose company you enjoy." Lestrade doesn't say anything – he's not sure that he can, even if there is something to say. Sherlock looks up at him again with a smirk. "Especially when you know you're going to enjoy the sex afterwards, too."

Lestrade grins.

* * *

He's not grinning when he gets the call – from Hopkins, of all people – to tell him that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson have vanished. He's frantic, actually, because the last he'd heard, Sherlock had been playing with malodorous experiments in the kitchen and John had been phoning everyone on his contact list to see if they wanted to go for a pint. That something had happened – a case, a kidnapping he didn't know what and it was he had to calm down – was sending him into something akin to a frenzy.

It takes six hours – there had been a case, surprisingly dull when Lestrade had looked at it – but they find Sherlock (and John, too, of course) curled up together in the back of an articulated lorry down by the docks. Lestrade has always liked the look of Sherlock oblivious to the world but the way his lips were tinged with blue, and the way he didn't respond to anyone's voices when they tried to get him to speak made sure that Lestrade would have nightmares about it for weeks.

Hypothermia, of course, and when Lestrade finally - finally - manages to get to the hospital, Mycroft is standing vigil outside of Sherlock's private room. Rather, he amends as he approaches, John and Sherlock's private room.

"Inspector," Mycroft acknowledges when Lestrade takes up residence beside him. Lestrade nods in response. "It's interesting, isn't it?" Mycroft murmurs and Lestrade sighs. He's not sure he's emotionally stable enough – at that moment, possibly ever – to deal with Mycroft Holmes. Instead, his gaze is focussed through the blinds and the window onto Sherlock, whose body is covered with so many thermal layers that Lestrade wonders how it is possible to even breathe under all of that. His lips are no longer tinged with blue and his curls are running rampant across his forehead and, in other circumstances, he thinks it might actually be a glorious sight. "A man who doesn't trust and the man who can't be trusted."

Lestrade can see Mycroft's sideways glance from the corner of his eye. He chooses to ignore it, as well as Mycroft's words.

"I take it they'll be all right?" He asks in response and he can see Mycroft's face shift, his eyes glancing back to the sight on the other side of the window.

"Yes." Mycroft ducks his head down and taps his umbrella against the floor. "I shall leave them in your capable hands, Inspector. Do call if there's any change."

And he's gone before Lestrade can respond that he doesn't have his number. He wonders if he needs a red phone for that kind of phone call.

He looks through the window again and considers going in, considers sitting at Sherlock's bedside until he wakes up. He doesn't. It's four in the morning and he's absolutely knackered and he knows he'll get no thanks for it.

He tells the nurse to phone him if anything changes.

She doesn't and Lestrade sleeps until two the next afternoon.

* * *

He's at Baker Street – again – because Sherlock's bored and John's at the end of his tether and Lestrade is available to play mediator. The stairs are dull, the drabness of the outside finding its way into the flat. At the top of the stairs, the door to 221B is shut firmly but Lestrade can hear the strains of something on the television and Sherlock's low drone. It only takes a few moments before the low drone to turn into a biting remark that is muffled by the wood of the door (freshly repainted).

Sherlock flounces past him without stopping, his blue robe billowing out behind him in the wake of the breeze his movements cause. It's distracting, almost. Lestrade watches him storm off to the his bedroom, the slamming door a sound Lestrade had thought he would hear from his son in a few years' time, not from his thirty four year old lover. He turns back to the living room when he hears the plink of the television turning off and then Watson is walking past him, shrugging into his jacket.

"I know he's your boyfriend but if you value your sanity and your freedom, you will come down to the pub with me and let him stew here for a while." Lestrade follows Watson before he really has time to command his body and casts one last glance over his shoulder to the closed door of Sherlock's bedroom wondering if this is why Sherlock hadn't wanted to move in with him. "He needs a case."

Lestrade can't help but agree.

* * *

Lestrade takes a week of annual leave and plans to spend it with Sherlock, except when he rings Sherlock's mobile John answers and informs him that Sherlock has gone off to Minsk for a case from his website.

He has dinner with Sylvia. It's awkward, which is normal, but it's also familiar in a way that he is starting to realise he really, really misses. They stay in the restaurant until closing, three bottles of wine on the table between them and when the staff start shuffling about around them, Lestrade calls her a cab.

"Are you all right, Greg?" Sylvia asks as they wait at the front of the restaurant, where they stand a little too close in the cold night air. There's a fine drizzle that feels like ice hitting his face but he's given Sylvia his scarf and his collar isn't big enough to hide behind. He meets her gaze through the darkness of the street but doesn't respond. "Only… I don't know. You don't seem as happy."

He shrugs and looks away from her, down the street to where he can see an approaching car and he hopes that it's her cab.

"I'm fine," he says with a shrug when the car passes by, the words little more than an exhalation of breath. "Just tired."

Sylvia hums in the back of her throat and when Lestrade turns to her, she's looking at her feet.

"I went on a date last week," she blurts and Lestrade feels his chest constrict at this information. It's not much, just a tightening around his heart and lungs and he tries not to dwell too much on what that means because… well. "It was… weird. I didn't enjoy it."

There's the sound of a diesel engine coming up the street and Lestrade hopes its not her cab because he wants to talk about this. He wants to know exactly who and where but the cab pulls up and she steps out of their little alcove, out of their little bubble.

"Sylvia…" He manages, his voice too rough considering… considering.

She pauses with the door open and tilts her head to the side slightly, her eyes fixed on her fingers.

"I'm not so angry anymore that I can't admit that I miss you."

She's gone before he gets the chance to respond.

* * *

He meets Watson for a drink the next night and it's awkward to start with. They've never just met up without the guise of Sherlock's boredom or John's need to escape Sherlock's madness (he'd call them 'eccentricities' but he knows Sherlock's beyond that stage now).

They're a few pints into the night when Watson snorts beer out of his nose.

"All right?" Lestrade laughs, and Watson's face has turned scarlet as he chokes and laughs and chokes again.

"Yeah," he manages to spit out. Watson takes a few seconds to blow his nose (beer up your nose is never good) and wipe his eyes before he chuckles slightly at himself. "I just remembered something Sherlock said to me the first night I met him." Lestrade quirks an eyebrow and turns back to his pint, taking a long sip from the glass. "He said he was married to his work." Lestrade sees John grin shrewdly from the corner of his eye and he smirks slightly as Watson gestures at Lestrade. "Puts a whole new meaning to it, I guess."

Lestrade snorts (thankfully, he'd been sober enough to swallow his sip of beer before doing this) and twists his lips into something resembling a smile. He's not sure he pulls it off.

"Yeah, well, I was married to my wife so…"

Beer ends up on the table in front of them and Watson, once again, has to wipe his face with a paper towel.

"You were married?"

Lestrade nods, his eyes falling down to where his wedding band used to sit snugly against his finger.

"Still am, technically."

"I…"

He turns to Watson then and shrugs again at Watson's wide eyed stare.

"Sherlock's…" He doesn't know how to finish the sentence. A vocabulary list runs through his mind but neither infectious, addictive nor magnetic seems to convey just how much Sherlock is.

From Watson's small nod, he knows the other man's in agreement.

* * *

He gets back from his first day back at work (nightshift, how delightful) to find Sherlock sprawled across his couch. The sight is familiar and Lestrade feels the tell-tale stirring of arousal (which is ridiculous because Sherlock's just lying there, looking just as bored and grumpy as he had before he left and that really shouldn't do it for Lestrade but… well.).

"You're back, then."

Sherlock's stare is beyond disdainful and Lestrade sighs, dropping into his seat.

"How very astute, Lestrade. Perhaps you should turn it towards your job more often."

Lestrade wonders (perhaps for the first time) if he really wants to put up with this anymore. He closes his eyes and sinks back into the seat.

"Then you'd never get any interesting cases."

Sherlock snorts but he doesn't respond – verbally, at least. Lestrade can feel Sherlock's body heat, can feel his breath (warm and moist and right there) above him and when opens his eyes, Sherlock leans down and nips at his bottom lip.

Later, in a sweaty heap on his bed, he's lying on his front while Sherlock play dot-to-dot with the freckles on his back, Lestrade's brain tosses out a question that he hadn't even (consciously) known he'd wanted to ask.

"Are you attracted to Watson?"

Sherlock stills and Lestrade takes his answer from that.

"Whether I am or not," Sherlock says while he withdraws his hand (and indeed, withdraws his whole body from the bed), "is irrelevant."

Lestrade turns over onto his back and folds his arms behind his head, watching Sherlock as he pulls on his discarded clothes (and Lestrade shivers because he hasn't even cleaned himself up and that's Lestrade's cum (dried though it may be) all over his stomach and his dick and the thought sends jolts of pure pleasure to Lestrade's groin).

"How so?" He manages to say in a normal voice, his tone light and querying despite the burning need to know now that he's asked.

Sherlock turns to him and stares for a moment before shrugging.

"I'm with you."

Lestrade finds he's not quite as comforted by that as he should be because, really, he'd been with his wife and he's seen the way that Sherlock watches John (he's not even sure either of those two know that he does it) and he's pretty sure it's something akin to the way that Lestrade had used to look at Sherlock. Desire for monogamy isn't enough – not when it comes to that feeling, that one that Lestrade has never been able to name because he's not sure that it's love because it's so entirely different to what he felt (feels) for Sylvia and he'd thought that she was the love of his life.

He purses his lips and watches as Sherlock finishes touching his attire up in the mirror. He's just about to leave (no goodbye kiss but Lestrade doesn't really expect anything else) when Lestrade finally replies.

"Is that enough?"

Sherlock stares at him for a long moment and it's quite possibly the most (he hesitates to use the word but there it is none the less) vulnerable he's ever seen anyone ever, ever, ever. And then the look, along with Sherlock, is gone.

* * *

He's getting ready for work when he hears what sounds like an explosion and, sure enough, a few minutes later his mobile rings. It's Maloney and there's been an explosion on Baker Street. Lestrade's in his car following a line of fire engines down a route he knows all too well.


	4. Chapter 4

Everything happens in slow motion. Or it seems to at least. Because despite Sherlock's rapid, radio convulsions and the sound of the ambulance as it whizzes down the motorway with the sirens blaring and despite the pounding of his own heart and the rush of blood in his ears, the sight of Sherlock's overdose is muted, somehow. Slow. Lestrade's brain refuses to process it even as it is assaulted with the visual and oral aids of Sherlock's body fighting against itself – against the abuse Sherlock had lauded on it over the years.

There's hands on his arms and words at his ear but he can't tear his eyes away from the seizing, sweating Sherlock on the gurney in front of him long enough to acknowledge the paramedic who is trying to keep Sherlock from biting through his tongue.

He's left alone for long, loud-but-quiet minutes Lestrade just watches as the man he has shared his bed with for the last seven months slowly (quickly? He's not sure anymore) (possibly) dies in front of him.

Then the back doors to the ambulance open and there's man there and the world snaps into focus and all Lestrade can hear is the gasping, shattered breath of Sherlock as his lungs fight against his heart's plans to kill him and Lestrade realises that his face is wet – that he's been crying for this man, and he's still crying. There's a nurse at his arm and he jumps out of the ambulance but when he moves to follow the gurney into the emergency area, a young woman (dressed to the nines in a business suit that probably cost more than his car if the cut and feel of it are anything to go by) presses her hand to his bicep and holds him back. He turns to stare (and perhaps to swear, too) at her and tries to pull out of her grip but then there's another voice, from his other side and Lestrade turns to see a man he knows he's never seen before but that he somehow recognises, anyway.

"You're presence will not be required, Detective Inspector," Lestrade is informed and the voice – the _tone_- confirms it (that he's Sherlock's brother, of course but Lestrade's brain processes are fucked up beyond reason and he has managed to scoff and shrug from the woman's grip when two other men (black suited) take a hold of each arm and manoeuvre him towards a waiting car.).

He doesn't get to see Sherlock that night. Or for many nights thereafter.

It's the same feeling – that knowledge that the passage of time hasn't slowed time but when his brain refuses to believe that time dilation is impossible. Because Lestrade's sure that there should be more noise than simply the slow, drum-roll beat of his heart accompanied by the faint background hiss of white noise. Because he's looking at the evidence all around him; the fire engines, the police cars, the ambulances, the people, the long plume of pressurised water from nine different hoses, the thick clouds of black-grey smoke… the orange flames igniting the inky black sky above…

And all Lestrade can think of is the fact that he didn't think a swimming pool could burn for slow long and so hotly.

* * *

When he did eventually get to see Sherlock, the other man had refused to acknowledge that he had just spent three months in rehab. Lestrade had come home from work (dull, boring, stupid) to find Sherlock dozing (what?) on his couch with a long woollen coat wrapped around his body.

His heart skipped a beat (or ten); the sight of Sherlock sleeping (no matter how lightly) was something Lestrade had never bore witness to, not in the long months since they started their… whatever. Sherlock was thin (too thin?), pale and his cheek bones were so prominent that Lestrade instantly wanted to bring charges of neglect against the people in the clinic (a leaflet had been deposited through his letterbox one morning); his hair was longer than Lestrade had ever seen it, curling manically at the ends, around his ears and forehead. He looked younger.

(Lestrade wondered how young he actually was. It was another of the many things he realised he didn't know about Sherlock).

"I need to find a flat."

Lestrade sighed and closed his eyes at the sound of that voice. It was ridiculous how much he had missed the sound of Sherlock's deep baritone posh voice.

"You can stay here, if you want." The words had slipped out before he'd even consciously thought of them and when Sherlock bends his neck to stare at Lestrade for a long, low moment he instantly regrets them.

"Mycroft suggested Pall Mall. I'm thinking Waterloo."

* * *

The fire brigade work tirelessly for nigh on three hours. For those three hours, Lestrade has been sitting in his car with his hands on the wheel, simply staring. He's staring because he knows there is no way, no way on Earth anyone would survive that inferno. The building is completely decimated; the parts of it that haven't already caved in are under threat of doing so and Lestrade has to wait even longer while the structural engineers move around, making calculations and pictures and ordering this and that and all Lestrade can hear is the heartbeat in his ears, all he can think about is the fact that it is too slow.

"Dad," Jeremy asks one day while they're having lunch. It's the school holidays and Lestrade has taken a few days off to see his son. He misses him, greatly. So he looks up from his mediocre meat feast pizza and urges his son to continue. "Are you gay?"

His heart stops, just for a few seconds and he feels his cheeks heat. He'd imagined a conversation like this countless times (had dreaded it, to be honest) but he'd not once imagined the roles would be reversed quite as they are.

"Why do you ask?" He asks because, really, Jeremy is twelve – should he even know what the word 'gay' meant? Lestrade can't remember that far back, to when he was that age, and he instantly feels old.

"It's just…" Jeremy's ears are pink, just like Lestrade knows his own are and he feels something paternal tug in his chest. "We watched a video in PSE and they talked about being gay – I mean home… homa…"

"Homosexual," Lestrade supplies and his son nods.

"Yeah, that. And they talked about how it's not bad if two men, or two women love each other. That we shouldn't say stuff about them. And… well. I wouldn't, anyway but… Well, you and your…"

Jeremy's face is beet red by this point but Lestrade has managed to keep a modicum of control over his blushes because suddenly, he's proud of his son. So very proud.

"Sherlock," he supplies again and Jeremy nods, his face tilted down until it is almost lying on the pizza in front of him.

"Yeah. Is he your boyfriend?"

Lestrade thinks about it. What is Sherlock? 'Boyfriend' would be the logical term but there's something so very adolescent about it that Lestrade just can't apply the concept to either himself or Sherlock. But lover is too romantic and sexual partner isn't enough.

He nods anyway and murmurs a quiet 'yes'.

"Oh." Jeremy lifts his head and his eyes are questioning. "You've not always been gay, have you? You can't have been."

Lestrade smiles.

"No, I've not." He takes a breath. "There's a word for that, 'bisexual'. It means you like both men and women." It's a simply label for him, too simple, because it's not that he likes men and women; he likes Sherlock and he likes Sylvia. But then, he feels pedantic arguing about it because he knows it makes him sound homophobic, maybe even a tad romantic but it also happens to be true. "You're allowed to like both."

"Oh," Jeremy says again and looks down. "Do you love Sherlock?"

Lestrade can't answer that question honestly for the simple fact that he doesn't know. He's obsessed with Sherlock and he fancies that it won't be long until his life is all about Sherlock but the word 'love' is something he can't… He sighs.

Simple.

He nods.

"Yeah."

"And you loved mum?"

He nods again. "I still do."

Jeremy frowns.

"Why…" he bites his lip and looks away, to a table across the room where two children are playing together under the watchful eye of their mother and father. "Can't mum be your girlfriend, as well then?"

Lestrade sighs and pushes his pizza away from him.

It's going to be a long afternoon.

* * *

Mycroft slides into the seat beside him. Lestrade hadn't known he was at the scene but Lestrade can smell the smoke from his clothes, the scent of burning air and he closes his eyes.

"I called in the best engineers in London. They cannot give an estimate on when our teams will have safe access at this time." Lestrade shudders, pulls his lips between his teeth and drops his head onto the steering wheel. "You should go home."

He should. But he can't. His sheets still smell like Sherlock – hell, Sherlock's shirt is still lying in a crumpled heap at the side of his bed from the other night. It's too quiet. It's too full.

"I…"

Uneasy silence descends between them and Lestrade heaves another sigh.

"It… is difficult," Mycroft begins but he trails off and Lestrade turns his head on his hands and stares at the other man's profile. Unlike Sherlock's, Mycroft's features are unremarkable; his height is the only thing that stops him from blending entirely into the background. That, and his umbrella. "Doctor Watson was taken under the eyes of my best men. Sherlock, as usual, slipped passed them undetected."

Lestrade's breath catches. Doctor Watson. It's ridiculous but he hadn't given Sherlock's flatmate a thought and part of him whispers that that is because he'd simply known he'd been in the building with Sherlock. Of course he had. Of course.

An image flashes into his mind: Sherlock on his knees at Watson's feet as he makes sure the other man is all right. It's gone in an instant and Lestrade's left with a strange, echoing stillness in his chest.

"There is a chance," Mycroft says some time later and Lestrade jerks at the interruption to the silence, "that they have survived." Lestrade sits back and turns to look at Mycroft, his features expressionless. "I have to trust in the genius of my brother, Inspector. And the ingenuity of one of the Royal Army Medical Corp's finest."

Lestrade blinks back his first tears.

Sherlock laughing is a sound Lestrade could get used to. It doesn't happen all that often and certainly not at banal sarcasm like that employed by Doctor Watson. It would be easy – so easy – for Lestrade to adopt jealousy but he enjoys the sound of Sherlock's laugh too much to be too concerned about it.

* * *

The first time Lestrade meets the infamous Girlfriend (Sarah, as John had introduced her), she's busy cleaning a wound on John's back while Sherlock bathes his hands in a bowl of diluted TCP. He leans over Sherlock's shoulder and tries to catch a glimpse of the scratched digits but Sherlock is hunched over them, his head almost resting in the water, too.

"What happened?" He asks as he takes a seat next to Sherlock at the table. Sherlock doesn't respond and he looks over to Watson who is busy glaring at Sherlock. "Anyone?"

"Your boyfriend almost got us killed. Again."

Lestrade raises an eyebrow at the viciousness in John's tone and when he turns to Sherlock, he catches the tail-end of a wince. His brows knit closer together for a few moments until he is once again distracting by Watson's sharp intake of breath.

"Sorry," Sarah murmurs as she moves about behind Watson's back. "Some of this glass is quite deep." John nods sharply, before lifting his eyes to meet Lestrade's again.

"We were looking for a very specific type of grit," (from John's voice, Lestrade can imagine those words are not his own) "that was found at your last crime scene and Sherlock couldn't remember which of two sites it was from." Lestrade raises an eyebrow because it was not like Sherlock to forget something like that. He turns to Sherlock but he is resolutely not looking at anything other than the pink-tinted water in the bowl in front of him. "It was in a nursery, by the way. The flower kind of nursery. Lo and behold our serial rapist pops out from behind a row of very lovely rose bushes wielding a fucking broad sword-"

"Machete," Sherlock interrupts and John shoots him a withering glare. "If you're going to tell the story, at least tell it properly. Or better yet, don't tell it at all."

John let out a low snarl and Lestrade felt his heart rate increase incrementally at the animalistic sound. When he looks over at Sarah, she has stilled and her eyes have widened slightly.

"You know what, Sherlock? Fuck you. Just… fuck you."

Sherlock lets out a scoff and there's a splashing sound and when Lestrade turns, Sherlock has lifted his hands from the bowl and is fluttering them around in front of his face.

"Very mature, John, be careful not to cut yourself on your razor sharp wit."

"At least I didn't trip over my fucking ridiculous coat and send us both crashing through the conservatory windows!"

There's a pause and Lestrade's not sure he heard right and the words are just not sinking in but there's a strange sound to his left and he turns to see Sherlock's body vibrating with suppressed shudders and when the same sound comes from his right he turns to see John bent over at the waist. It takes a moment but the room quickly fills with the sound of not-quite-manly giggles and Lestrade looks between the two men and the words finally, finally sink in.

"You…" he stops, looks at Sherlock who has tucked his chin down onto his chest in an attempt to hide his face but Lestrade can see his body vibrating with silent laughter. "You tripped over your coat and fell through a window?"

Sherlock laughs then, loud and deep and tilts his face up to the ceiling and Lestrade is struck by the wide smile that overtakes his face. He watches for a second (because my God, the only time he's seen that neck stretch like that is when he is balls-deep inside of the man) before a grin splits across his own face and he starts laughing, too.

"Your… your face!" Watson gasps from across the room and Sherlock somehow manages to look across at him, his grin changing but not dimming and Lestrade really enjoys that look on Sherlock's face. "You should have seen your face!"

Lestrade wishes he had been there.

When the word (that hateful, hateful word) blazes to life in his mind again, he doesn't struggle to dim its radiance.

* * *

It's mid-morning by the time anyone is allowed in the building. Lestrade isn't the first one in, the firemen are. It's early afternoon before a team is allowed in with dogs. Lestrade goes in with them, picking his way over charred metal, melted plastic, half-boiled goggles and swimming hats. There are stairs that he descends and he feels heat emanate up towards him – not much but enough and he knows that what they are coming to is the epicentre of the inferno.

There's a huff to his right and he turns. Mycroft is there. It's very surreal. In his mind, he can almost hear the laughter of children, the splashing of water, the white waves of reflected light on the walls. Almost. What he hears is S&R dogs pattering and snuffling and yelping, the sound of footsteps on slippery tiles, the echoing sound of too many breaths against the walls; he sees dark shadows and refracted light, pillars of black and puddles of blackness.

The dogs are going wild all over the place and engineers are called over to engineer debris from the bodies. There's rifles amongst the remains. Snipers his mind supplies.

He steps into the greyness, towards the heat. He takes another step and another and the same stillness is resonating within him. He's not sure when it's going to hit him.

"Another one!" Someone calls out from nearby but he doesn't turn. The cavern where the pool had been looks like something that should be on the surface of the moon. He can't orientate himself. It doesn't help that he hadn't known the layout of the building before but all around him is destruction and rubble and debris.

He spins slowly on his heels, takes in the sight around him and it's so very not good.

At the other end of the pool (when had he moved to far?), splitting a beam of light in two, is the tall outline of Mycroft Holmes. His arms are by his side, his hands absent of the umbrella. He looks lost.

Something opens in his chest and the echoing stops.

* * *

"Sherlock?" He murmurs into the darkness around him, the bed surprisingly cold on the other side. "Who were you talking to?"

It takes a moment for him to answer and when he does, there's a strange note in his voice.

"Jeremy Kyle."

* * *

One of the dogs is going berserk and his paws skitter across the slippery surface for a moment before he propels himself to the corner opposite Lestrade. The trainer quickly follows and shifts a few loose pieces of debris where the dog now lies quiet and docile and Lestrade's blood thrums quickly through his veins. He's been shouting orders at anyone who will listen and Donovan has been supplying him with a year's worth of concerned glances but he doesn't care. He wants them found and he wants them found now.

"There's two over here!" The trainer calls and Lestrade's feet almost go out from under him as he races across the crater in the centre of the room. He glances quickly behind him and Mycroft is following, his pace much more serene. There's something about two of them that… well.

"Oi!" Lestrade shouts at an engineer who is fussing with a contraption that looks too basic to cost as much as Lestrade knows it does. "Over here!"

"But-"

"I said over here!" Lestrade interrupts, his anger boiling over.

"You heard the man," a voice says to his right and the other man nods and moves quickly to where the dog was still lounging on the uncomfortable debris. Lestrade's heart is beating a staccato rhythm against the inner side of his ribcage so violently that it hurts. It hurts. "Ingenuity," Mycroft murmurs quietly but Lestrade can't turn to him, can't take his eyes away from where the engineer is setting up his really too basic rig.

He really needs to remember how to breathe.

* * *

"Sherlock?" Sherlock hums, his lips finding skin at the base of Lestrade's neck. "Do you ever think about drugs?"

There's a pause, the hand at his hip jerking before it settles softly against the bone.

"All the time."

Lestrade squeezes his eyes shut tight and forces himself to relax.

"Do you want-"

"All the time."

Lestrade nods.

"Why don't you?"

He can feel Sherlock frown on the back of his neck and he smiles. It's not often he manages to confuse Sherlock.

"I almost died." There's a long, slow breath against the warm skin of his shoulder and knows it isn't designed to arouse but it does anyway.

"You almost die quite a lot, these days."

Sherlock shakes his head.

"Not the same."

It's Lestrade's turn to frown.

"How is that not the same?"

"I'm not to blame for people trying to kill me." Lestrade could argue that point but he doesn't. "I am, however, to blame for becoming an addict."

"Not really. You said it yourself, addict. You couldn't help yourself."

Sherlock huffs out a breath and rolls onto his back. When Lestrade turns, he has an arm thrown over his face.

"I could have, in the beginning. Even towards the end, I could have." He heaves a sigh and Lestrade wants very badly to reach out and touch him. He doesn't. "I misjudged; I took too much. All I wanted was the high. I never wanted the comedown." He shrugs, drops his arm back to his side but his body has lost its looseness, his shoulders tense.

"Are there drugs in your flat?"

"Yes."

Lestrade groans.

"Sherlock…"

"You won't find them."

Lestrade rolls his eyes at the imperious tone and slaps Sherlock's chest lightly.

"That's not what I'm worried about."

Sherlock tilts his head towards him, his eyes scanning across Lestrade's face for a moment before the corner of his lips tilt up at the side. It's a rueful, almost affectionate look and it has the warm and tinglies starting in Lestrade's toes.

"I'm not an idiot." Lestrade moves to protest but Sherlock presses his fingers over his lips. "Not anymore." Lestrade rolls onto his back and mirrors Sherlock's pose. It only takes a moment but Sherlock turns to stare back up at the ceiling. Lestrade copies him. "I don't want to die - not anymore."

Lestrade's eyes shut as his heart fractures.

His lungs forget how to work – hell, his brain forgets how to function.

* * *

The two are wrapped around one another. The suit is unmistakable, the pale skin far too familiar.

The world stops again and Lestrade falls to his knees.

It all happens in slow motion.

His eyes fall shut as his heart fractures.


	5. Chapter 5

Notes: This part took so long because I had two ideas on how to end it and I started writing both before deciding to go with this one. There are a few bits I struggled with but I figured I'd kept you all waiting long enough. So here it is. The final chapter of Of Having Met You. I hope you like it.

* * *

Sylvia is there (he vaguely recalls holding the phone to his ear and gasping out a few raspy words). Mycroft is across from him, his weighty power not enough to allow him access to the rooms beyond the swing doors. Sarah's there, her face blotchy and wet, her medical knowledge telling her more than Lestrade would ever want to know. Donovan is there, too, somewhere in the background (he vaguely recalls tears streaming down her cheeks as they'd extracted Sherlock and John. Sherlock and John.). John's sister is rocking back and forth in her seat, her arms wrapped around her legs; she's separated herself from the group. Internalised. Lestrade envies her that.

* * *

Lestrade gets to Baker Street just after eleven o'clock. The days are getting longer (only just) but the temperatures are still almost always sub-zero – it's been a cold, cold winter. The stairs are dull, the room beyond remarkably quiet. He knocks once on the door (it's late, he doesn't want to intrude if John is in there with Sarah) and Sherlock's quiet voice tells him to 'come in'. He enters and the room is as dull as the stairway, lit only by a lamp next to Sherlock's favourite chair, in which Sherlock sits reading a book. He looks cosy, wrapped in his pyjamas, robe and blanket and the dying embers of the fire cast a homely, wintery feel around the room. He steps into the room, opens his mouth to say 'hello' when Sherlock holds up a silencing hand that quickly flutters and gestures towards the couch.

Watson is lying there, cocooned in a ball of blankets and pillows, his head squashed down into the back of the couch. He's sound asleep.

Lestrade looks over to Sherlock, who is watching Watson with a curious gaze. Lestrade waits.

"Shouldn't you wake him up and send him to bed?" He asks quietly after a few long (more than slightly awkward) moments of silence. Sherlock jerks at the sound of Lestrade's voice but shakes his head, eventually.

"No." Sherlock frowns and glances down to the page in front of him before snapping the book shut (he winces at the noise it makes and glances quickly to Watson's form on the sofa. He hasn't heard). "He sleeps better where it's warm."

Lestrade follows Sherlock into his (warm) bedroom.

* * *

He can't close his eyes (blinking counts, too, so he tries not to do it) without seeing the two bodies wrapped around one another. Sherlock's, the larger, curled tightly around Watson's back. One arm around his shoulder and across his chest, the other around his waist; his legs wrapped around Watson's thighs. Watson's hands gripping each of Sherlock's arms-

He shakes his head but the image stays.

It's not that he's jealous (he'll admit now that he is, a little) but it's that they could have died like that. It's heart-breaking. It's even more heart-breaking that they still might die and not be wrapped around one another. There's something about the image that conjures every synonym for 'pure' and 'heart-breaking' that there is. He can't think of them right now, though.

He catches Mycroft's eye and for a moment, the stoic gaze falters and Lestrade sees his own turmoil reflected in dull grey eyes.

Mycroft looks away first.

* * *

"You were in Afghanistan?" Lestrade asks and Watson nods after only a fractional hesitation. "Hm," he says and Watson sends him a small, bemused smile and Lestrade winces. "Sorry." He turns back to the television, his eyes blurring slightly from the week's exhaustion finally catching up to him. "Can't have been easy?" He says when he's startled from a light slumber by the shouting on (he can't actually believe Sherlock and John record) Jeremy Kyle.

Watson laughs, startled and loud and Lestrade turns to him and runs the words around in his head again. Ah.

"It wasn't as bad as you might think." Watson shrugs and licks his lips. "Until I got shot." Lestrade winces but doesn't say anything. He's not sure there's anything to say. He shuts his eyes and leans his head against the back of the couch, his eyes drifting shut. "You can go to bed, you know. You don't have to keep me company." Lestrade opens his eyes slowly and lifts his head to look at Watson. It's half past midnight but it doesn't look like the other man is going anywhere. "I'm sure he won't mind," Watson adds and Lestrade lets out a huff of breath.

"I'm sure he won't."

He hauls himself out of the armchair and makes his way through the kitchen to Sherlock's empty room. He turns a blind eye to the ramshackle chemistry lab that's been constructed from instruments pilfered from Bart's and NSY.

Sherlock doesn't make it to bed that night and when Lestrade wakes the next morning both he and Watson are standing in front of the mirror staring at Sherlock's post-it notes.

Watson's wearing the clothes from the night before.

* * *

Mycroft tries to get him to leave. So does Sylvia. But his feet have taken root in the hospital floor and there is absolutely no way he is moving until a doctor comes through those doors and tells him that Sherlock is fine. He doesn't entertain the notion anymore that maybe Sherlock won't be fine because it's something that doesn't bear thinking about.

"When you saw them," Lestrade says and his voice cracks slightly from disuse. He's thirsty. "You said something about ingenuity. What did you see?"

Mycroft closes his eyes and his fingers stretch away from where they are resting on his knees.

"I was mistaken."

Normally Lestrade would laugh at the pained expression on Mycroft's face as he says those words but he's fairly sure his face will ever even smile again after this, if Sherlock doesn't make it through. Instead, he closes his eyes and folds his arms across his chest and sinks further down in the chair.

It takes several hours – and Mycroft's been going up to the nurses' station at the end of the hall pretty much every ten minutes of those several hours – but a doctor (young, too young) comes out and gestures to Mycroft to leave the group and follow him. Lestrade moves to stand but Sylvia grips his arm and he turns to her, ready to fight her off but Mycroft is already shaking his head and gesturing for Lestrade to follow him.

The doctor takes them passed wards filled with tubed-up patients lying in pain to a small room at the end of the hall. The curtains are pulled over the windows so Lestrade can't see into the room but he knows from the way that the doctor pauses at the door that he should be preparing for the worst. He knows this, he knows this but his mind is not co-operating and seems to have gone on standby because all he can hear, all he can think of, is the white noise buzzing in his ears.

"…spinal injuries-"

"What?" Lestrade manages when his brain finally tunes in to the world around him and he sees Mycroft's glare flicker to him before it softens into something else.

"We're keeping him sedated," the doctor continues, ignoring Lestrade's outburst, "to minimise risk of further injury. There was significant swelling of his brain and we've had to drill into his skull to relieve pressure but we're hopeful there will be minimal brain damage though we cannot be sure until he wakes up. He's on a ventilator to assist his breathing and to ensure his lung doesn't collapse again." The doctor moves towards the door and pauses again, turning to Mycroft. "It looks bad, you should prepare yourself."

Mycroft barely nods before the doctor pushes the door open and steps in. Both Mycroft and Lestrade hesitate, glancing to one another before Lestrade takes a step forward.

The room is dimly lit, the faint glow of the bedside lamp casting eerie shadows against the walls. The rasp-click of the ventilator echoes around the room and it sends chills down Lestrade's spine. He shivers and his eyes make their way (slowly, painfully) to the bed.

His first thought, ridiculously, is that it isn't Sherlock lying there.

His head is wrapped in bandages, holding a small tube in place. His mouth is full of plastic tubing and tape holding the tubing in place. He is covered in bruises and cuts and crispy blood. His neck is braced up and he's lying flat on his back, not propped up by pillows or the tilting bed.

That's all he can see, the rest is blurred out by the sheen of tears in his eyes and he refuses to cry, he really does because it's ridiculous to cry and he knows it but he can't stop it and-

"Good grief, Sherlock…" Mycroft murmurs and Lestrade lets out a startled burst of laughter at the berating tone in Mycroft's voice. "What have done to yourself now?"

And Lestrade suddenly has a vision of what this scene must have been like three years before without him as the audience.

When they leave Sherlock's room ten minutes later, the doctor is leaning against the wall just to the right of the door. Lestrade is surprised but he manages to hide it, possibly only because he is still in shock at the sight of Sherlock looking so broken.

"What of John Watson?" Mycroft asks and the doctor looks startled for a moment, glances quickly in Lestrade's direction before sighing quietly and shaking his head. Lestrade's heart stutters. "Hadn't you best attend to him then, Doctor Stevenson?"

It takes the two men long minutes before they move to step back out into the waiting room.

* * *

It's easy, then, to let Sylvia lead him out of the hospital and into a cab. It's easy to lay his head on her shoulder and close his eyes. It's easy to drift into a quiet slumber as the cab takes them through the streets of London and when she guides him through the front door of his old house it's easy to find his way to the bed they used to share and shed layers and tears all the way there.

It's easy, when she wraps her arms around him, to forget the past three years ever happened at all.

Except he wakes up in the morning (early afternoon?) with itchy eyes and the bed beside him is empty and it's not so easy to forget that he's just slept with his ex/estranged-wife while his boyfriend/partner/lover is lying in a hospital bed a few machines away from dead while another good man may or may not have been pronounced dead in the hours he'd been slumbering.

Back at the hospital, Mycroft is sitting where Lestrade left him the night before but his suit is different and he looks slightly less tired than Lestrade feels. Mycroft glances over him (he hadn't bothered going home to change, or shower) and his eyes settle for a moment on Lestrade's neck and he has a flash of Sylvia lips there and he winces. Mycroft stares pointedly for a long moment before turning his eyes back to some spot in the near distance that Lestrade is pretty sure is unremarkable.

He doesn't like the way his skin prickles at Mycroft's coolness but he sits stubbornly in the chair across from him and clears his throat.

"How are they?" Lestrade asks and he sees Mycroft's eyebrow crawl up his forehead slightly before he tempers the movement and sets his face back to cool neutrality. "Is Wats-"

"They both made it through the night, you will be glad to know. The doctors wished for a few minutes along with my brother. You may see Doctor Watson if you wish. His sister will be returning shortly."

Lestrade nods and rises before he even realises it and he pauses as he hovers over Mycroft awkwardly.

"Is he all right?"

"Not entirely, no. Go; he's in the room next to Sherlock."

Lestrade nods and turns towards the corridor he only vaguely remembers walking down the night before and he pauses outside of Sherlock's room for a moment. He can hear the sound of people moving about, the muted murmur of voices and – quietly, in the distance – the hiss-click of the artificial lungs feeding oxygen into Sherlock's lungs. His hand reaches up to brush against the door; the smooth, laminated surface is cool under his fingertips and he lets his hand linger there for a long moment before he draws a breath and walks passed the room.

He's not entirely sure why he is standing just outside John Watson's door; there's a part of him that feels awkward because he doesn't really know the man and yet… He's a good man and he has gotten to know him a little over the past few months and it's the right thing to do.

He pushes the door open and the room is dark and there's the all too familiar sound of hiss-click and John Watson's whole body is black and blue and covered in gauze and casts and Lestrade has no idea how the hell he managed to survive a building falling down around him, or a blazing inferno for hours upon hours upon hours.

When Harry comes in and repeats, in a stilted voice, what the doctor told her that morning, it's clear that the doctor's aren't sure how he survived it either. When he voices that thought (he hadn't meant to, it just sort of slipped out while he'd been staring at the injured mass in front of him) Harry laughs lowly and shakes her head.

"What's another few scars?" Lestrade stares at her, aghast and she shrugs as a sad smile creeps across her face. "That's how he'll see it."

Lestrade doesn't understand how he could ever live his life like that.

* * *

Sylvia doesn't say much when he shows up at her door in the middle of the night.

* * *

"Your wife is here."

Sherlock is blissed out on a mixture of drugs, the main of which he knows is morphine (and he knows that Sherlock's withdrawal will hit as soon as they stop feeding it to him and he doesn't want to think about how much pain his lover (he winces) must be in for his brother to consent to his being drugged up) yet he's still as sharp as a tac.

"Yeah, she drove me here."

They'd kept Sherlock sedated for a full four days before slowly lowering his dosages and allowed him to come off the ventilator and took the small tube out of his head. It had taken him another two days to fully come around for more than seven seconds at a time and it had been one of the most wrenching experiences of Lestrade's existence; the doctors had all explained the risk of brain damage and those figures had run through his mind on repeat every time Sherlock opened his eyes and blinked blearily at the air around him before slipping back into unconsciousness.

When he did eventually wake up, no one was surprised when Sherlock was fine. Sore, but fine.

Now, Sherlock eyes him and there's a flicker of something in his eyes (Lestrade would like to call it jealousy, perhaps 'hurt' but he's not entirely sure either of those fit) before his eyebrow does an imitation of Mycroft's cool climb.

"I see."

Lestrade tries to hide his wince, hide the fact that he is suddenly, incredibly uncomfortable but it's impossible and he shifts from foot to foot.

"How's your back?" Lestrade asks as he lowers himself into the chair beside the bed. Sherlock stares at him for a moment longer before settling his head back against the pillows and staring at the ceiling. Lestrade waits but there are no words forthcoming. He leans forward. "Sherlock?"

"Yes, Lestrade?" It's the distant voice and Lestrade hates it, winces at it even as he acknowledges that he more than deserves it.

"I asked you how your back is."

"It's fine. My head, however, is very sensitive to sound at the moment." Lestrade wants to make a joke about the drugs Sherlock's on and the impossibility of him experiencing something as mundane as a headache under their influence but the words don't come and a strange sound escapes his throat instead. "I think it would be best if you left."

Lestrade bites his lip and closes his eyes as something hot and sharp and biting flares up through his stomach into his throat and he bites back against it and tastes the faintest trace of blood from his lips.

"Sherlock…" Silence is Sherlock's only response and Lestrade sighs and levers himself from the chair. "If you need anything-"

"To be alone will suffice for now, thank you."

Outside the door, Lestrade isn't sure that the feeling coursing through him isn't something akin to relief. Relief, Christ, because he's pretty sure he's just hurt Sherlock in a way he is convinced Sherlock didn't think Lestrade was capable of. Relief because he's not sure he could keep up with what they'd been doing for the past three and a bit years because only now, only now does he realise how much of the past three years have been spent on edge, taught as Sherlock's violin strings, fraught with worry and fears and hopes and oh God…

He sags against the door, his knees giving out from under him and he slides to the floor, head dropping to his knees and he just breathes for the first time in such a long, long time.

* * *

"Sherlock!" He shouts when he pushes the door to Sherlock's room open and sees the other man attempting to leaver himself out of his bed and into a wheelchair that was quite obviously miracle from somewhere because everyone was under strict orders to keep Sherlock in bed. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're trying to aggravate your back and find yourself in a wheelchair permanently!"

He reaches out to lay his hand on Sherlock's shoulder and urge him back onto the bed but the younger man flinches away from him and glares at him.

"Don't touch me."

Lestrade freezes for a moment before quickly withdrawing his hand.

"Of course, sorry."

Sherlock starts coughing again and Lestrade winces – it's not exactly a pleasant sound – and Lestrade swithers on whether or not to call the nurse but Sherlock, observant as ever, reads his intent and shakes his head.

"You dare…" he gasps, clutching his hands over his chest. It takes a few moments but Sherlock's coughing stops and another silence falls between them. It's different; it's not comfortable and it's not uncomfortable but Lestrade can feel the subtle strains of apprehension that leak from Sherlock, and from himself. "You didn't - don't - love me, Lestrade." Lestrade opens his mouth to retort because he's fairly sure he did – does – but Sherlock holds up his hand and quietens him. "I know about addiction," he says and looks pointedly to the bag hanging from the IV drip at the side of his bed. "I know that I have an addictive personality." Lestrade snorts lightly and Sherlock glares at him. "Sex is addictive – and good sex is even more addictive, particularly when it is at a sustained level of good-" (Lestrade wonders briefly just how high Sherlock actually is) "and our sex was very good and very often." Lestrade quirks an eyebrow in amusement even as his heart clenches a little at the use of the past tense. It's ridiculous. "I am not a good person, Lestrade. I am not a person that other people love easily. What you felt for me felt like love but I can assure you…"

"Sherlock," Lestrade finally interrupts and his heart has given up clenching and instead is battering against the inside of his chest and it hurts so fucking much. "I think I know I felt more than you. Yes, you are addictive. Yes, you are difficult. Yes, I think I did love you. Am I in love with you-"

"Such a definition-" Sherlock interrupts scaldingly but Lestrade continues.

"I don't know. I think I always kept a part of myself… You're a dangerous man Sherlock – and I don't just mean your job. It would take a much better person than I am to be able to love you – to be in love with you – and not be consumed by you." There's an awkward beat where their eyes meet and Lestrade's heart stutters because fuck, fuck, fuck if that man isn't the most gorgeous thing he has ever laid eyes on, Lestrade isn't sure what is. Even with – especially with? – those bruises and the short (God, so short) hair. "You're quite domineering, Sherlock," he says with more than a hint of wryness and Sherlock lets out a huff of air that masquerades as a laugh.

"I am aware."

There's another silence but it's quieter this time and Lestrade can feel something uncoiling in his gut. He's not stupid enough to think that he's suddenly over Sherlock. He doesn't think he ever will be because Lestrade knows about addiction, too. And even now he wants nothing more than to reach out and run his hands over Sherlock face and neck, touch his lips to the mottled skin and…

He pulls himself upright and mentally shakes himself.

When he looks up, Sherlock is smirking at him.

He glares good naturedly in return.

"Have you been in to see John?" Lestrade asks and he watches as Sherlock's face shuts down. It's subtle but the skin around his eyes relaxes and his lips tighten slightly.

Lestrade huffs a quiet breath through his nose.

"I've been in and out." Sherlock glances towards the door and pulls his lips between his teeth briefly before pursing them and letting out a sigh. "He's boring when he's unconscious."

That startles a laugh from Lestrade and Sherlock looks surprised by the sound, and they smile at one another.

"Well, I've not been to see him yet. If you promise to be good-"

"You know how good I can be," Sherlock interrupts lasciviously and Lestrade pins him with a sharp stare. Sherlock runs his top teeth over his lip again and stares over Lestrade's shoulder for a moment. "My apologies; habits."

Lestrade nods and moves to the side of the bed.

"Behave," he says to Sherlock once the younger man is settled in the high-back wheelchair and blanket tucked (grudgingly, amusingly) over his legs.

But Sherlock's apparently holding his breath and Lestrade tries not to think about that as he wheels them next door.

* * *

"What…" There's a pause and during it, Lestrade holds his breath (he maybe even closes his eyes) because Sherlock's tone is low, quiet – it reminds him of post-coital conversations and rumpled clothes and… He clenches his eyes and lets out a breath, slowly. "What did you think? This time."

There's a quiet moment and Lestrade tries to remember a time when Sherlock's voice was as soft, as pleading – as achingly pained - as it was just then.

"Please, God, let him live."

_Please God let me live._

"Yes." Lestrade can hear Sherlock's swallow from the other side of the door and he can hear everything that wasn't said just as clear as the things that were.

Lestrade hadn't even known Sherlock believed in God.

* * *

He and Sylvia file for divorce a month after John Watson is finally released from hospital. Lestrade drops him and Sherlock off at physiotherapy (he still doesn't understand how he came to be Sherlock's chauffeur) and heads over to the lawyers where he meets Sylvia out the front.

She's been crying.

He understands, he feels like crying too.

Inside, she apologises again and he is still flabbergasted by the fact that she is apologising to him.

"It's fine," he tells her because, really, it is. He loves her (God, yes, of course he does) but even he could see that their relationship was well and truly over. And it hurts. It hurts a lot. His eyes sting. "You haven't done anything you need to apologise for."

She hiccups and Lestrade wants very much to wrap his arm around her shoulder and pull her to him. He doesn't, though.

"I thought we could-"

"I know. It's fine."

* * *

It takes another seven months before Lestrade sets foot inside Baker Street. Sherlock had been consulting on some cases (alone, because John's leg and back had been more seriously injured than Sherlock's and he was prone to getting 'stuck', his short term memory shorting out every now and again and leading to Sherlock hovering Lestrade had been amused to find) but Lestrade had always managed to summon him by text to the location.

He wishes he'd summoned him by text this time because when he sees Sherlock, rumpled from sleep and wearing that ridiculous blue robe he wants nothing more than to step up into his space and maul him.

He thinks he might actually have taken a step towards Sherlock when John Watson walked out of Sherlock's bedroom in not much more than his skin and stopped both Lestrade's movement and his heart.

His chest is tight and he tries to keep his features neutral even as he watches Watson freeze with his hand scratching the back of his neck and his hair sticking up on end and…

He looks back to Sherlock who is watching Lestrade with a gaze that is remarkably close to apprehensive. They stare at each other for a moment (Lestrade is under no illusions that Sherlock might have missed his lust) before Lestrade clears his throat and finds an interesting spot (it actually is interesting, the way the paper is singed from the wall) on the far wall to stare at.

"Three bodies in Lewisham, fourth in hospital claiming they were all frightened to death." There's a beat and it's so bloody awkward. "Will you come?"

Sherlock's gaze flick to John, hold for a moment before he glances back to Lestrade with a sharp nod.

"Not in a police car. We'll be right behind you."

And Lestrade's suddenly reminded of an afternoon about a year ago and he should have known, even then. He'd thought it, at the time – that Sherlock didn't have people and yet…

Sherlock leaves and Lestrade tries to scramble out of the door as quickly as he can but Watson's voice stops him.

"Lestrade-"

"It's fine," Lestrade says because it's what he wants to believe. It's not; he knows it's not and the ache in his chest that has been amplified by about a million reminds of how very not fine it is.

He leaves.

* * *

Four days later he's berating Sherlock's stupidity at the back of an ambulance and Watson looks on with a curious twist to his lips and Lestrade wants not to feel the little victory that jumps up and down in the back of his mind but he does.

It's short lived, of course, because when Watson stands and tells Sherlock he'll see him back at home (home), Sherlock turns quickly and grips him by the wrist and uses Watson's motion to pull him to his feet.

"Don't be an idiot." It's said so fondly that Lestrade almost misses the way that Sherlock's fingers haven't let go of Watson's wrist. Almost. "Lestrade," Sherlock says in farewell and he and Watson are turning away towards the main street and Lestrade watches them go.

And as he settles into his chair later that night, alone, with a bottle of beer and some Mock the Week on Dave, he thinks back over the last four years of his life; of having met Sherlock, of having loved him.

He can't bring himself to regret it.


End file.
